TOKYO — The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has won a historic landslide victory while the Liberal Democratic Party — which had ruled for over half a century almost uninterrupted — suffered a crushing defeat, losing nearly two-thirds of its seats in the House of Representatives. The DPJ now has more than 300 parliamentarians in the more powerful lower house while the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been reduced to 119 seats.

TOKYO — If the polls are correct and Japanese voters put an opposition party in power on Aug. 30, the consequences will be felt well beyond the country’s political nerve center in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district. The expected election of a new administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan [DPJ] could herald a major reconfiguration of the Japan-U.S. alliance, described by the former U.S. ambassador to Japan, Mike Mansfield, as “the most important bilateral relationship in the world.”

TOKYO — The last time Joe Coombs came to Japan, it was as a prisoner of a militarist state. During the final weeks of World War II, he was imprisoned on the southern island of Kyushu and forced to mine coal, unpaid and in appalling conditions. By the time Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, he weighed just 99 pounds. Sixty-four years later, as Japan prepares to mark the anniversary of the end of the war, Coombs has returned in search of justice.